SOLVING THE AI RACE

SOLVING THE AI RACE

https://www.general-ai-challenge.org/ai-race

Background

Research and development of artificial intelligence is making encouraging progress. AI is being recognized as a strategic priority by a range of actors, including businesses representatives, private research groups, companies, and governments.

This progress may lead to an AI race, where stakeholders compete to be the first to develop and deploy AI that would give them a strategic advantage. Such a transformative AI can be either AGI (a system that can perform a broad set of intellectual tasks while continually improving itself), or sufficiently advanced specialized AIs.

It is important to address the potential pitfalls of competition towards transformative AI, where:

Key stakeholders, including the developers, may ignore or underestimate safety procedures, or agreements, in favor of faster utilization

The fruits of the technology won’t be shared by the majority of people to benefit humanity, but only by a selected few

N.B.: there can be multiple races (in narrow AI, in AGI, different scales such as geopolitical, or even within teams). Better understanding the nature of possible AI races in general is part of the objective. Bear in mind that most governments, general public, and politicians are likely to have a limited understanding of AI, so helping comprehend the situation is an important step toward solving the pitfalls.

Objectives

Primary objective: find a solution or set of solutions for mitigating the risks associated with the AI race.

Secondary objectives: create discussion around the topic in order to gain a better understanding of the nature of the AI race, raise awareness of the race, and to get as diverse an idea pool as possible.

Timeline

Launch of the round: 18 January 2018
Submission deadline:18 May 2018
Results announced: 18 July 2018